Screen printing is an old and established way of creating designs on various substrates, such as textile fabric, paper, metal, wood, glass, etc. Screen printing is essentially a stencil method of printing where the stencil is formed by a screen stretched over a wooden or metal frame. For finer detail, a finer-meshed screen is used.
Early versions of screen printing used silk to form the screen. A design was created by painting the screen with a greasy medium The pores of the silk were then closed using a suitable gum. The pores of the silk in the areas covered by the greasy medium were not closed because the greasy medium rejected the gum. Thereafter, the greasy medium was washed away with a solvent, such as turpentine if paint was used as the greasy medium, resulting in the corresponding areas becoming pervious to ink. The screen was then placed on the surface of the substrate to be decorated and ink was applied through the screen to the surface using a rubber squeegee. The ink soaked through the pervious areas of the silk and was imprinted on the surface.
More recent versions of screen printing use fine mesh screen materials other than silk. The chosen screen material is coated with a photographic emulsion. The photographic emulsion is exposed to a suitable source of light with the image to be reproduced being located between the light and the emulsion. The light causes the emulsion to harden except in areas where the image is located. Thereafter the screen is washed, which removes the emulsion from the areas where it has not been hardened by the light, i.e., the image areas. Then, the screen is to print a design on a substrate.
In recent times, screen printing has been widely used to create a variety of single and multicolored designs on a variety of textile fabric items, particularly clothing such as T-shirts and sweatshirts. Various machines have been developed to improve screen printing. Unfortunately the majority of such machines, particularly those designed to create multicolored designs, are large and complex and, thus, expensive. Others are heavy, cumbersome, deteriorate rapidly and lack adjustability. One machine in particular is heavy and cumbersome because it is made of pressed wood. Pressed wood deteriorates rapidly when subject to the high heat generated during the curing of screen printed designs. This same machine lacks an adjustable height platen and a precise screen registration mechanism. The present invention is directed to providing a low-cost, easy to use, precisely made and easily adjustable all-in-one screen printing machine suitable for creating both single and multiple color designs.